Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The English may not always be the best writers in the world, but they are incomparably the best dull writers.
The moment a man sets his thoughts down on paper, however secretly, he is in a sense writing for publication.
I'm an occasional drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard.
Woe, woe, woe... in a little while we shall all be dead. Therefore let us behave as though we were dead already.
All art at some time and in some manner becomes mass entertainment, and if it does not it dies and is forgotten.
An age which is incapable of poetry is incapable of any kind of literature except the cleverness of a decadence.
If you're not tough it's hard to survive in this world; and if you're not kind then you don't deserve to survive.
Neither of the two people in the room paid any attention to the way I came in, although only one of them was dead.
I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings.
The truth of art keeps science from becoming inhuman, and the truth of science keeps art from becoming ridiculous.
I think a man ought to get drunk at least twice a year just on principle, so he won't let himself get snotty about it.
The actual writing is what you live for. The rest is something you have to get through in order to arrive at the point.
I hung up. It was a good start, but it didn’t go far enough. I ought to have locked the door and hidden under the desk.
At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.
The tragedy of life, Howard, is not that the beautiful die young, but that they grow old and mean. It will not happen to me.
The plants filled the place, a forest of them, with nasty meaty leaves and stalks like the newly washed fingers of dead men.
Television is just one more facet of that considerable segment of our society that never had any standard but the soft buck.
The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the single most valuable investment a writer can make with his time.
It is a language which is being molded by writers to do delicate things and yet be in the grasp of superficially educated people.
Show me a man or woman who cannot stand mysteries and I will show you a fool, a clever fool - perhaps - but a fool just the same.
A check girl in peach-bloom Chinese pajamas came over to take my hat and disapprove of my clothes. She had eyes like strange sins.
From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.
If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I should not have come.
The dilemma of the critic has always been that if he knows enough to speak with authority, he knows too much to speak with detachment.
Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl's clothes off.
The French have a phrase for it. The bastards have a phrase for everything and they are always right. To say goodbye is to die a little.
Above all never forget that a marriage is in one way very much like a newspaper. It has to be made fresh every damn day of every damn year.
The faster I write the better my output. If I'm going slow, I'm in trouble. It means I'm pushing the words instead of being pulled by them.
Under the thinning fog the surf curled and creamed, almost without sound, like a thought trying to form inself on the edge of consciousness.
Don't ever write anything you don't like yourself and if you do like it, don't take anyone's advice about changing it. They just don't know.
Such is the brutalization of commercial ethics in this country that no one can feel anything more delicate than the velvet touch of a soft buck.
I have made three rules of writing for myself that are absolutes: Never take advice. Never show or discuss work in progress. Never answer a critic.
There are two kinds of truth; The truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The fist of these is science and the second is art.
As it is she will probably turn out to be one of these acid-faced virgins that sit behind little desks in public libraries and stamp dates in books.
The challenge of screenwriting is to say much in little and then take half of that little out and still preserve an effect of leisure and natural movement
Love interest nearly always weakens a mystery because it introduces a type of suspense that is antagonistic to the detective's struggle to solve a problem.
The challenge of screenwriting is to say much in little and then take half of that little out and still preserve an effect of leisure and natural movement.
I had a funny feeling as I saw the house disappear, as though I had written a poem and it was very good and I had lost it and would never remember it again.
It is just possible that the tensions in a novel of murder are the simplest and yet most complete pattern of the tensions on which we live in this generation.
Without magic, there is no art. Without art, there is no idealism. Without idealism, there is no integrity. Without integrity, there is nothing but production.
All language begins with speech, and the speech of common men at that, but when it develops to the point of becoming a literary medium it only looks like speech.
Americans will eat anything if it is toasted and held together with a couple of toothpicks and has lettuce sticking out of the sides, preferably a little wilted.
The growth of populations has in no way increased the amount [of art], it has merely increased the adeptness with which substitutes can be produced and packaged.
The modern film tries too hard to be real. Its techniques of illusion are so perfect that it requires no contribution from the audience but a mouthful of popcorn.
It was a smooth silvery voice that matched her hair. It had a tiny tinkle in it, like bells in a doll's house. I thought that was silly as soon as I thought of it.
The perfect detective story cannot be written. The type of mind which can evolve the perfect problem is not the type of mind that can produce the artistic job of writing.
Police business is a hell of a problem. It's a good deal like politics. It asks for the highest type of men, and there's nothing in it to attract the highest type of men.
All men who read escape from something else into what lies behind the printed page; the quality of the dream may be argued, but its release has become a functional necessity.
I looked down at the chessboard. The move with the knight was wrong. I put it back where I had moved it from. Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn't a game for knights.
Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject; bad critical writing by the necessity of maintaining the professional standing of the critic.